


The Boy with the Thorn in his Mind

by Boton



Series: Reichenbach Tales [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Anxiety, Depression, Drug Abuse, Exceptional/Profound Giftedness, Gen, Generation X - Freeform, Medicinal Drug Use, Only Canon Compliant-ish, Recreational Drug Use, The Smiths - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-21
Updated: 2015-04-21
Packaged: 2018-03-25 03:46:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3795520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boton/pseuds/Boton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With John out on a date and Mrs. Hudson out of town, Sherlock had a rare evening of privacy. He knew just what he was going to do with it, too.  He was going to get high and try to make his depressed, over-active mind shut up.</p>
<p>Rated T for descriptions of drug use/abuse.</p>
<p>This takes place sometime before TRF.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Boy with the Thorn in his Mind

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Sherlock Holmes and his universe are the creation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Sherlock is the creation of the BBC and its partners, and of co-creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss. This work is for my pleasure and that of my readers; I am not profiting from the intellectual property of those creators listed above.
> 
> Author’s Note: If you’ve read my work before, you know that I try to keep everything as canon-compliant as humanly possible while still exploring possible back- and supporting stories. This story is a little different; it’s not precisely an AU, but it is a Sherlock that is, in some ways, very much more a product of his era and his generation than I think the Sherlock writers may intend. I did this out of a desire to play with what Sherlock’s relationship with drugs might be in an era with drastically different social norms than the Victorian Era, but without going down the addiction/rehab path. So, just be aware that this is a very “Generation X” Sherlock, and be aware that the story may be only “canon compliant-ish” in that regard. See the end notes for more about my thoughts on the story.
> 
> Also, standard disclaimer, but this story does not constitute support of this sort behavior regarding drugs; please don’t take your behavioral cues from fictional characters doing ill-advised things at the hands of nefarious writers.

“I should be out late, so don’t stay up,” John said jauntily as he grabbed his keys to the flat and almost skipped out. 

Sherlock observed John’s “date shoes,” his nicest trousers, and his carefully-pressed shirt, but he didn’t need any of these clues to know John was headed out on a much-anticipated date. John had finally gotten the new lab tech who was working with Molly to agree to go out with him, and he was fairly vibrating with excitement. He had told Sherlock twice about his upcoming date, and Sherlock had seen him change shirts three times before finally deciding on a deep red check that went nicely with his olive trousers.

Sherlock waved his hand half-heartedly from his position on the sofa, where he had been lying for the better part of the afternoon. Without a case on, he hadn’t bothered to get out of his pajama pants, t-shirt, and dressing gown. And, with John out on a date and Mrs. Hudson out of town, he had a rare evening of privacy. He knew just what he was going to do with it, too.

He got up from the sofa and attached his phone to the small portable speaker on his desk, then rolled through his music collection until he found what he was looking for: The Smiths. As Morrissey’s voice filled the flat, he acknowledged to himself that he usually turned to his violin for comfort when he had a problem to solve. But when the thoughts became overwhelming, it was time to let someone else make the music. And what could possibly be better for one of his black moods then the soundtrack to depression he remembered from uni?

He called them black moods, and so did Mycroft. Their mother called them “having the blues.” Why were moods described by colors, he wondered? Seeing red and green with envy and writing purple prose; everything that involved an excess of emotion had a color.

Sherlock went to the kitchen and poured himself two fingers of scotch; he wasn’t much of a drinker, but he knew it would slightly calm him, and he knew that he wouldn’t be tempted to overdo. Unlike other things, he was blessedly not inclined to drink to excess. He remembered the last time he had turned to a drink to settle his nerves; it was in the Cross Keys Inn after his drug-induced anxiety attack in Dartmoor. His hands shook on the glass and the liquid was bitter and tingled in his throat and gave him something to hold onto while his mind flew apart. Just like tonight.

Panic was bad enough, but it was the continual assault from his own mind that he had to find a way to deal with. In his privacy, he thought, he had time to handle the situation before John came home. He walked back to his bedroom and opened one of his bureau drawers.

For all the times that John had taken clandestine peeks in his belongings, he had never questioned the bottle with Sherlock’s name on it and the drug name methylphenidate. Although it wasn’t as common for an adult to be prescribed the drug, Sherlock had had no trouble going to a GP and describing enough of the truth to get a diagnosis of ADHD and a nice, legal supply. Of course, the GP probably had envisioned a more consistent dosing schedule than Sherlock would agree to, and he certainly didn’t recommend the number of pills that Sherlock shook into his hand. He downed them in one go and followed them with a swallow of scotch, also probably something that would not fit with prescribing guidelines. But he knew enough about his body’s reaction to the drug that he felt he was safe with the amount he had taken. 

“Here’s to better living through chemistry,” he muttered, as he returned the pill bottle to the drawer and went back to the lounge, where he slid down in front of the sofa and placed his head down on his knees, which were drawn up to his chest. 

This time it was Moriarty. It was all well and good to lay a trap for Moriarty by letting him think he was destroying Sherlock’s reputation. Sherlock and Mycroft were already deep in planning for the final phase of operation, in which Sherlock would lure Moriarty to a visible, controlled environment and force a confrontation. A solution to the final problem.

Except it wasn’t just one problem, it was many problems. And every single one of them assaulted his mind over and over, as Sherlock tried and tried to solve the problems as they were presented by his overactive mind, one right after another. Moriarty was the proximate cause of this black mood, the catalyst for a terrible chemical reaction playing out in his own brain.

But it didn’t take a Moriarty to bring one of these on. There was just too much data in the world, and he saw it all, and he had to analyze it all. He had to take every fact and see it through to its logical conclusion and solve any mysteries he found along the way. Every desk in every office he entered was a rich supply of documents strewn about that he had to read; he did so in a flash, taking mental photos of any that were upside down and rotating them in his mind until he could see them and read their contents. From this he learned salaries and disciplinary actions and what was contained in grocery lists and training manuals and love notes and trip itineraries, and every bit of that data had to be filed away and used to update what he knew about the person.

Visiting an unknown house could be torture. Shelves and shelves of books that had to be catalogued and analyzed: a variety of religious books bespeaking either a struggle with religion or devotion or lip service to one; textbooks from uni begging to be understood as either mementos from favorite classes or rejects that were never discarded; paperbacks on tables speaking of visits to airport shops before long flights, pages stained with coffee. Kitchen cupboards giving quick glimpses of products as they were opened: a whole story of tastes and preferences and diets tried and failed and hints to upbringings. Textures, too, as he felt the choice of leather for a chair or an antique antimacassar behind his head, hinting at dislike for spills or love of a favorite relative. And it all had to be taken in. 

Even car parks. Cars with stickers for various causes and hints at trips taken and previous ownership. All of these had to be taken in and made into a coherent whole to help him understand the driver, who he would never meet, if he were truly lucky. Because meeting the individual would no doubt involve a souvenir t-shirt or a scarf on a handbag or a wallet opened and then the whole bloody process would start again and he would have to solve it and he couldn’t stop until he solved it and it was all the time and it never stopped.

Sherlock ground his eyes into his hands, starting to feel the effects of the methylphenidate. He was lucky in that he didn’t experience much in the way of negative side effects. No, luck had nothing to do with it. He had experimented on himself until he found the substitute for cocaine: a stimulant, less addictive, legally available. He felt the euphoria start to wash over him, and he reached over to the table to drain his glass and sit it back down; one was enough. One drink with this amount of the drug would heighten the sleepiness and lethargy until he stood a chance of his mind shutting up long enough to go to sleep. He desperately needed to sleep; far more than even John suspected. But every time he laid down his mind started up again, going through the Moriarty scheme one more time and the thirteen plans he and Mycroft had constructed and what he needed to have on his person for each and where he could wind up at the end of the day of confrontation and the dozens of things Moriarty could say or do, each requiring their own planned response. And if that got old, his mind was more than happy to dredge up old problems and situations he could have handled better and problems that weren’t solved and they all had to be solved before he could sleep. 

“Sherlock? Oi, mate, can you wake up for me?” 

John’s voice broke through the reverie, and Sherlock looked up blearily to see John crouched before him, one hand on Sherlock’s elbow to gently shake him.

“John,” Sherlock said, waiting for his brain – blissfully quiet for once – to switch back on. “I thought you said you’d be out late.”

“Well, it’s half one. That’s pretty late,” John said. “What’s wrong? What did you take?” John asked directly.

“Why do you think anything’s wrong?” Sherlock asked, buying a bit of time. 

“Well, for one thing, I just found you asleep wedged between the sofa and the table with an empty,” - here John sniffed the glass – “glass of scotch beside you and The Smiths on continuous repeat,” he said. “I haven’t heard ‘Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me’ since you thought Irene Adler was dead,” John said with a small smile. “Now, what did you take?”

“Methylphenidate,” Sherlock said. “I’ve been having trouble concentrating lately, and I thought I should give it another try. Maybe I forgot what the dose was,” he said smoothly. Close enough to the truth that it wasn’t entirely a lie.

John looked at him skeptically. “Yeah, and you forgot that you probably shouldn’t take that kind of thing with alcohol. You know that’s not the kind of drug you just go on and off. If you need it, you stick to it; if not, you don’t play silly buggers with it.”

“You’re probably right,” Sherlock said, letting John give him a hand up from the floor. 

“You know, if there’s something bothering you…. If you want to talk about something…,” John offered, trailing off. 

“I know,” Sherlock said, reaching to flip off the speaker and retrieve his phone. “I’m fine. I’m just going to go to bed.”

“I just mean,” John started again, “there’s nothing you can tell me by now that would shock me, and there’s nothing I won’t try to understand, if you just give me a chance. There’s nothing you have to handle alone.” He shoved his hands in his pockets as he looked at Sherlock. 

“I know,” Sherlock repeated. “Believe me, if there was anything I could say or explain, I’d say it to you.” And with that, he turned and made his way down the hall, hoping to lie down and sleep before his brain fired back up and he had to live through the process over and over and over again.

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s Note: One of the beauties of Sherlock Holmes is that, across incarnations, he is both a product of his world and a being that is somehow above it. I think you could argue that a truly successful version of Sherlock Holmes (and there have been many) would feature a Holmes that might fit very well in several of the other incarnations if you gave him the necessary hair styling and clothing changes. Holmes transcends time even as he is very much a part of it.
> 
> I’ve been wanting to explore Sherlock’s drug use and his black moods, but the challenge is to put them in a modern context. Victorian society had far fewer drug laws than we do, and there was more room for the idea of a “casual user” without falling into the territory of “hopeless addict.” Although many fan fiction authors do a brilliant job examining Sherlock through the lens of addiction, I find him far more interesting if he is walking a bit of a tightrope of using drugs to manage his raging mind. But, as I suggest in one of my early metas, I do think he occasionally plays a little fast and loose with his drug consumption, particularly as he attempts to self-medicate with what he has easy access to.
> 
> Because his drug use is so governed by modern availability of different pharmaceuticals, a different legal environment than that of the Victorian era, and different attitudes toward altering one’s mind with chemicals, that part of this story had to be firmly rooted in the present. So, I decided to also play with him being very much a product of his generation – Generation X (b. 1961-1981) – in the cultural touchstones he finds comforting during one of his bouts of anxious depression.
> 
> I also wanted to play a little bit with what I think it’s like to have the mind of a Sherlock Holmes. Based on some research into and personal experience with exceptional and profound giftedness, I believe that data capture is the problem. The extremely intelligent mind takes in so much information, and something has to be done with it. And even a Sherlock Holmes might find that exhausting and search for a way to shut it off.
> 
> As for my weaving of The Smiths throughout the story, this is based on my private head canon that Sherlock secretly loves both this quintessential British angst band and The Cure, and that he listened to “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me” and “Pictures of You” for two solid weeks after The Woman’s “death.” I privately think that’s part of why John was so angry at her when he finally met up with her at Battersea Power Station – there’s little as simultaneously heart-wrenching and annoying as living with your best friend during a breakup. 
> 
> * The title is adapted from a song by, of course, The Smiths.


End file.
